The Final Post

I lost track of the writing blogs on our last couple of meetings. The team had a flurry of activity leading up to state. During the last two meetings they added two original songs to their sound affects along with a live trumpet performance. They had rehearsals where they tried to put this all together but in all honesty they never really had a rehearsal where they had every element put together and perfected.

The afternoon before state some of the St. Bernard people traveling to state met in the school parking lot, decorated cars, and caravaned to the hotel we stayed at in Wisconsin Rapids. At the hotel that night we had a banquet room with pizza and salad and everyone enjoyed some camaraderie. Team 1 had an early performance which meant leaving the hotel around 6:30am. We arrived in Stevens Point with plenty of time to get a great parking spot, the gear was quickly unloaded. The facility was very nice with a great prep area just outside the performance room. This gave the team plenty of room to assemble the hive, repair damage to the pieces of grass, get their costumes on, and do a little bit of meditating (it's become a team tradition!).

The time passed quickly and before we knew it it was time to hand over the paperwork, answer the litany of silly questions, and get ready to move into the "launch" area. The team was then introduced and the show began. You can view the video at the link below but suffice it to say the team put together an amazing performance. Things went off without a hitch, the crowd and appraisers were into it, the timing on the sound affects was great, no lines were forgotten, and the pheromones were released as sucessfully as I've seen them. Even the grand finale had more impact than usual (ask Ben if you don't believe me, see the video it is hilarous), and portions of the crowd jumped to their feet when time was called.

After watching this performance take shape over the course of the season and watching many rehearsals this was by far the best it's been, up until this point the regional tournament had been the best performance; the team outdid itself at State.

The team had an interesting Instant Challenge. The team left the IC feeling bad about their performance, I can't go into details but at the last second something happened that in the eyes of the appraisers caused them to lose nearly all of the points they had gained. In the "chill out room" where the team goes to talk amongst themselves about the IC they decided that the appraisers had erred in their judgment. They asked if they could talk to someone. The people running the room agreed to contact the IC challenge master. In the meantime the team was led outside and introduced to the crowd (which was a cool touch) unfortunately the team was distracted kind of ruining this cool moment. They finally did get to talk to the challenge master and explained their interpretation of the rules and how they felt they may deserve more points than awarded. The challenge master agreed to review their situation and that they would find out when they received their final scores how it turned out. As of this writing we still haven't seen the final scores, they should be posted on line sometime soon.

Since the team was finished early they were able to view quite a few other performances and just hang out which was nice. Some members had to leave early but four were able to stay for the awards ceremony. There was a fraction of a second when the middle level Instinct Messaging places were being read where it seemed like a trip to Tenessee might be in our future. The first place team was "St." I don't know what they said next but it wasn't Saint Bernards.

So the season came to an end, but it was a great season, hopefully everyone had fun, I know I did!